Blower
My preseason of discontent—and blowing shit up
By ANDY ENRIGHT

I rapidly tired of disemboweling lizards. Concealing concrete blocks in cardboard boxes and stacking them on the side of the road for Fiat drivers to swerve into also had a limited shelf life. Even the cicadas, still singing and ripe for a .177 pellet to the exoskeleton, lost my interest after a while. But in Marina di Carrara, these were about as good as it got.

There are plenty worse places for a kid, largely left to his own devices, to spend his tenth year. We lived two blocks from the beach and one from Di Lieto's amusement arcade. The arcade's football tables were badly chipped and the whole joint held the vague tang of Di Lieto's body odor. The smart set had long since decamped to Forte dei Marmi, five miles down the Ligurian coast. The summer crowds were back in Turin, Milan, Genoa, and wherever the hell else they descended from. Carrara was just idling at tickover, the hoteliers kicking their heels, the marble quarrymen blasting in the hills. And Paolo Giammalva was giving it large about the upcoming ski season.

"You know there's already a foot of snow up at Abetone?" Paolo ventured, gazing up from our airless game of air hockey. His words clambered over a trapful of liquorice.

Later, in the parking lot of the Scuola Italiana Sci Abetone, Paolo and I watched as his mother sped off in a cloud of dust in her ancient Merc. There did appear to be at least six inches of fresh on the clear-cuts of the rounded Apennine hills. Mrs. G was off to spend the day with the butcher from Lucca, giving us the time we needed. "Get going, fatty," puffed the not-so-svelte Paolo as he clattered across the car park in his ancient Dalbello two-clip boots and ill-fitting one-piece. "We're late." Indeed, there was much work to do.


You could set your watch by Alessandro, the ski patrol guy. This time of year he'd emerge from the bowels of the ancient gondola station at 6:30, scratch his nuts in contemplation, then switch on the engine of the red cat machine before retiring for espresso. This was our five-minute window. Paolo climbed onto the roof of the cat. I passed our skis up, then joined him under the tarp on top of the cab among patrol ropes, boundary poles, and Alessandro's six-pack of Nastro Azzuri he would use to get gently drunk later in the morning.

6:35. The door to the patrol room opened and clanged shut. Two minutes later, following Alessandro's nasal excavation project, the cat lurched into gear as we began the 25-minute bump and grind to the upper lift station. The clatter drowned out the sounds of our movement above the cab. "Check me out, I'm Rommel!" boasted Paolo, poking his head out of the tarp facing forward. Paolo's father was still in denial that Axis forces lost the war, and some of it rubbed off on his son. I didn't hold it against him. Besides, he was way too young to grow a moustache.

Our plan, like on previous outings, was to hitch to the top and wait for 'Sandro to fire up the bullwheel of the old gondola that the resort bought in a fire sale from a Hawaiian resort. When he wasn't looking we'd skip down the cat track to hide behind the toilet block next to the explosives shed. It guaranteed first tracks down Sestaione, followed by a surreptitious blast through the larches into the Valle de Lima. We'd spend the rest of the day damming the river and building snowmen over concrete bollards along the Sestola Road. But today was different. Today 'Sandro unlocked the explosives shed.

Ten-year-old feral kids have a hard time resisting temptation, especially where ordnance is concerned. Paolo and I both grew up with explosives. Our fathers worked at the marble quarries above town and each New Year's Eve they would treat us to spectacularly reckless fireworks displays of drunken bravado. We'd never lit any ourselves, but when 'Sandro fired up the cat and chugged off to blast the open slope at Foce di Campolino, opportunity knocked.

The explosives shed stank of dead birds and the only light came through a tiny, rime-encrusted picture window. Glass cracked underfoot as we crept to the racks on the far wall. There was a girly calendar three years out of date, and a pile of old newspapers on the table (which today strike me as nostalgically appealing fire hazards). Paolo clambered onto the racks and burrowed into a box at the back. "Get the biggest one," I urged. "And get one for me."

"Do we need det cord?"

"No, just grab a couple of the Brianzas." Brianzas were our term for the fat charges that looked like one of the locally produced salamis.

"I've got a whole box of 16 here," said Paoli.

"Bring 'em." We carried our bounty into the daylight. The Brianzas were a year out of date, so we decided to test one right then and there before skiing off with a hefty crate of 15. "When it's lit," I directed, "we'll chuck it in the toilet. That'll mask the noise."

Since Paolo threw like a girl, I decided to lob the fizzing stick through the gaping shithouse door myself. After three attempts to light the charge it wouldn't take. I pulled the fuse a little and rubbed it between my fingers to roughen and dry it. Still nothing.

"Trust you to pick the only duff box," I shot at Paolo, jabbing the Brianza into his midsection like an accusing finger. "Go back and get another one. And take this one back with you." Paolo emitted a scornful snort and carted the box away, disappearing into the shed.

Seconds later, he ran out shrieking. And for a fat guy, Paolo was motoring. His eyes were bulging as he came belting towards me, arms windmilling in graceless opposition. It was comical for half a second until I realized what was about to happen.

My stomach dropped into my boots. When the shed went up the percussive jolt threw me face-first 50-yards down Abetone's steepest run. Every tree lining the piste dropped its snow in spontaneous incontinence. As I lay there, stunned, smoking debris dropped from the sky in staccato pitter-patters. My ears whistled wildly. Paolo's feet were sticking out of a berm 20 feet farther downhill.

"Fuck."

"Oooooh fuck," answered Paolo.

"Jesus, are we in for it now."

"It's completely vanished. Gone."

"Never mind the shed, look at the gondola."

A huge bite had been taken out of the lift station. The fiberglass was a blizzard of crazed shrapnel. The mangled lift mechanism was a riot of twisted metal, the guide rails ticking as they cooled into warped spirals.

"Sestaione?"

"Sestaione!" And we bolted down the hill.


I don't recall much of that first and last run of the '78-'79 season. I clacked onto the tarmac of the Sestola road, took off my skis, and glanced up at the pall of smoke still hanging over Abetone.

We were silent the whole way down, and certainly didn't discuss Paolo's patent soiling of himself on the hill. It was the last either of us would see of the resort; Paolo received a lifetime ban and I was exiled to England to live with my mother.

Twenty-five years later the sound of patrol bombs still makes me grin widely. And I can still see Paolo "Blower" Giammalva's cotton underpants dangling from the branch of a larch tree by the side of the Sestola Road.


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London-based contributor Andy Enright still pines for explosives and fast cars.